As a parent I have often stood in stunned silence while observing my children on life's learning curve. The boy riding cardboard down the stairs, firing heavy items at his sister one Saturday morning with the classic line "don't move, I think I can hit you this time" (poor little girl, when I got to her she was shaking in her boots) or my daughter--just 4 years old--opening up drawers in show-home kitchens and trying to climb into them (don't worry, we bought the place).

The thing is, sometimes you can reach children with words and advice, and sometimes they have to learn things on their own. Last night, the Oilers kids had a bit of a pity party. Completely predictable and now let's now do that again.

The sagging shoulders, the "I'll just do it myself" turnovers, the stick thwack against the boards, the benchings. It's all part of the maturing process and if you think it didn't happen with the Boys on the Bus you're sadly mistaken. A missed flight by Messier, a BoBo search party and many other examples (on and off ice) over the years. I remember in the WHA era that Dave Hunter was benched because he took a penalty in the last minutes of periods too often. Seriously. It became an issue, his ass was stapled to the bench and he learned not to do that anymore.

The trick is to make the discipline strong enough to have an impact without going overboard and losing the player. I think Tom Renney's actions last night were solid. That's a fine line, you know. The Oilers have lost players over the years (Arnott, Comrie) to various events that got blown way out of proportion. In some of those cases, the fanbase was part of the problem (certainly with Arnott).

Taylor Hall is a teenager. Expecting the kid to know it all at the beginning has more to do with impatience on our part than any kind of disconnect from the kid. Eberle and MPS too. They are inconsistent and they make the same mistakes over and over and sometimes it seems like it'll take forever. Hell, Gagner and Cogliano are still on that long learning curve. In fact, Ladislav Smid is just now reaching a point where we can see consistency in his game and perhaps say goodbye to the unforced errors.

It's a long way to the top when you get into scorched earth rebuilds. We're going to be up and down emotiionally like a rollercoaster in these next few years and there's really not a damn thing we can do about it. The Christmas movie "It's a Wonderful Life" included the classic line "ah, youth is wasted on all the wrong people."

Not so, in this case. Patience with the three rookies will eventually result in very good things for Oiler fans. That 7-1 beatdown last night will be turned around in due time. We need to remember it takes time for kids to learn, and enjoy the small victories while enduring the backward steps.

We've seen it before.

Lowetide has been one of the Oilogosphere's shining lights for over a century. You can check him out here at OilersNation and at lowetide.ca. He is also the host of Lowdown with Lowetide weekday mornings 10-noon on TSN 1260.

He's speaking Madjamian. It's an incredibly complex language to learn and imparts only severe depression and paranoid delusions if you master it. We recommend you do what everyone else does and just treat comments from madjam the same as you would from that aunt at the reunion with severe Alzheimers; you just smile, nod, and keep moving without holding their crazy comments against them. While with a great deal of effort madjam has shown that he is capable of using thought, sentence structure, and punctuation together in a paragraph, it's clearly too taxing for him to expect it every time.

that is way to logical. I ram myself into the corner of my desk and read his posts through the tears as they fall down my cheek...

THE COMEDY CLUB was the wrong venue at this point and time . Far beyond the normal bounds of a Tradgedy movie . With seeemingly more talent on our farm club than on our NHL club , one wonders if Bettman and league might start imposing a $1M dollar penalty /game on Oilers for running a superior team in the minors to their NHL team . I guess we could hope for a major injury situation and see our AHL club come up and see better hockey ?

Just what and who is learning ? Are we already deliberately throwing the season down the toilet ? Maybe thats why AHL squad not being called up .

Renney not amused by COMEDY CLUB act ! A farce , spoof ?

You'd have a hard time convincing anybody that our NHL squad is as good or better than our first place AHL squad .

I suppose because our building sells out no matter who and what they put on the ice , their is no need to anything expediantly or time worthy ?

No frustration here (tongue in cheek ) but theirs only 3 rookies on squad , not an entire team of misfits . Skinner put on a clinic for our rookies to see along with the veterans he made look sick . Quite the perfomance from our defence ! If our club doesn't play above it's head every nite , we just are not in a game . Rebuild excuse is being used far to often as an excuse for entire team failures ." Canned "excuses are not making our team any better and if accepted will only continue to make matters worse and for a longer time .

Madjam, seriously, I love you! Of the very few things in life that can possibly blow my mind, you are one of them! Being able to proclaim that an AHL affiliate team is better than their NHL counter part and write it with conviction, devastates me! I don't know what reality you are from or if you even connect to any one in particular.

What I must ask of you is, to not stop inducing that physiological chemical experiment one might refer to as a brain! That and regardless of how pretty the girl is that offers you her vertical smile, don't take that foil helmet off for anyone!

I go to church every Sunday and pray that the Oilers will lose. I pray that the defence sucks. That the penalty killing sucks. That the goaltending sucks and that the power play never scores. I pray that there GMs out there who are willing to trade thier first round picks to us for Dustin Penner, Tom Glbert or Andrew Cogliano. I pray that there is a GM dunb enough to take Sheldon Souray off our hands.Most of all I pray that the fans of this great hockey city be given patience. I too dream of Stanley CUp glory. I too long for the day when we can hold our heads high. Its been too long since we hoisted Lord Stanley's Trophy. The road will be long, but the reward will be that much sweeter when we get there.

Tough to compete in games when the Goaltending is brutal. Then the youth kicks in and they spiral out of control. It's going to happen all year. 1 win for every 2 or 3 losses. 1 blowout for every 2 or 3 close ones.

There's no doubt in my mind that of the bottom 5 teams in the NHL, the Oilers have the best chance of staying in the lottery hunt. Just look at the goaltending.

Good point. You need to also add in the blue line, which was my biggest concern coming into the season. It is brutal - likely the worst in the league right now.

Khabi is starting to look his age this season and the rust from last year's layoff is showing as well. Starting him last night was a mistake - he appeared to be gassed from the get go.

Doobie looks okay at times, but his stats will likely suffer with more playing time behind the Oilers' blueline. However, he needs playing time to develop so they might as well play him more often and see how he does.

The lack of top end centremen on the team is really starting to show more now as well. My guess is that MBS goes for bigger pivots (1st round and later rounds if guys he likes are available) in the upcoming draft rather than d-men, especially if Coutourier (?) is there when the Oil pick. If Pitlick can develop into a solid #2 centreman in a couple of years then the team should be set up front for a while.